Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
by Maddiecake
Summary: TwoBit reflects upon his friends after they are dead. [TwoShot][Songfic]


_Written because I can see it happening.  
This does not take place after Vietnam, and it is after the book.  
I changed some things for this, but here you go.  
Also, I'll try to update The Outsiders today or tomorrow  
I don't own The Outsiders, nor do I own this song. I do own any characters you may not have heard of.  
_

* * *

A young man of about eighteen or nineteen entered The Dingo. It was, for once, empty. The cook stood in the kitchen, flipping his spatula in his hands and staring at the ceiling with a bored expression. The waitress leaned against the counter, sipping a coke and examining her blood-red nails.

When he entered, it was like everything came to life. The cook promptly dropped his spatula and blinked several times before bending down to pick it up. The waitress set down her coke and approached him, a flirtatious smile on her face, but her face fell when he did not return it with one of his usual smart-ass remarks.

"What'll it be?" She asked, her voice flat, as she realized that she had been rejected.

"A coke," Two-Bit said in a hoarse voice as he sat down in one of the booths near the window.

_There's a grief that can't be spoken.  
There's a pain goes on and on.  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Now my friends are dead and gone._

He couldn't believe that he had been the only one out of his friends to survive. Sure, others that had volunteered had lived, but none of them were people that he had been good buddies with.

Tears stung his eyes, and Two-Bit stubbornly held them back. He looked around the restaurant, the images of his friends still in his mind. Johnny would be sitting near the window, not wanting to sit between two people and enjoying the scenery. Perhaps he would be blushing as the guys teased him about his girlfriend, Marissa.

Ponyboy would be sitting right next to Johnny, working on a paper for school or watching the events unfold. Sometimes he would poke fun at his best friend, but he would always say "just kidding" afterwards, as if he was afraid Johnny would take it too seriously.

Dallas would be smirking, sitting at the outside of the booth so he could watch the waitresses walk by, sometimes snaking an arm around their waist and pulling them into his lap. More often than not, they would giggle and wrap their arms around his neck, whispering things into his ear, and he would smirk even more. Other times they would smack him and stalk off.

Steve would be laughing, arm wrestling with Soda and trying with all his might not to loose. He hated it when people beat him at something, and knew that if he used all his strength he could _definitely_ beat his best friend.

Soda would be grinning like crazy, complaining when Steve took some of his fries but that smile never leaving his face. He looked like a damn _clown_ with that smile, but it brightened up everyone's day, and nobody had a problem with it. Sometimes he would be sitting closer to the edge, Sandy practically sitting on top of him, the two talking quietly and laughing.

Darry would be sitting quietly across from Johnny near the window, watching everyone's antics with a look that clearly said 'if the manager comes up to us, I don't know any of you'. If things got too rowdy, he would calm everyone down, but most of the time he didn't contribute to the conversation except to tell people to quiet down or to tell Two-Bit to 'get the hell off the table, nobody wants to see that'.

_Here they talked of revolution.  
Here it was they lit the flame.  
Here they sang about tomorrow'  
And tomorrow never came._

It was at The Dingo that they had had the rally, Dallas and Tim as the leaders, yelling over the din about the 'revolution' and how this would be the rumble to end all rumbles. They asked all who "had the balls to participate, as Tim put it, to step forward. More than half the people in there took a step forward, the others being female, too young, or they had jobs in the morning that they didn't want to miss.

Two-Bit furiously wiped away his tears. They had died in vain.

_From the table in the corner  
They could see a world reborn  
And they rose with voices ringing  
I can hear them now!  
The very words that they had sung  
Became their last communion  
On the lonely barricade at dawn._

He closed his eyes, no longer able to hold back the sobs that wracked his body. They had all been so excited to participate, to bring the Socs down once and for all. Even Ponyboy, who usually hated this sort of thing, was excited. They had all talked about what they were going to do when they won, the parties that they would throw... and then _this_.

If he closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he could hear their excited voices. He could feel Soda slapping him excitedly on the back and hear Steve yelling right next to his ear.

Two-Bit laughed coldly, no real happiness in his expression at all. It was funny, how Dallas had been one of the leaders of the entire fight, and yet he had been one of the first to fall. A soc had a bat and brought it down right on Dally's temple, crushing his skull. The hood had fallen, his blonde hair a mess of blood and brain.

_Oh my friends, my friends forgive me  
That I live and you are gone.  
There's a grief that can't be spoken.  
There's a pain goes on and on._

New images flooded his mind, and he tried desperately to get rid of them. Nothing could get rid of them now, and he eventually gave up, dropping his head into his hands and watching as tears splashed onto the Formica tabletop.

Steve had been choked to death with a chain, the Soc behind it had been William Denbrough, drunk off his ass and unable to tell that he had killed another human being when the teen beneath him had stopped struggling. He had eventually been dragged off by a few of his friends, exclaiming "oh _shit_, man! I didn't mean to... it was an _accident_!"

After Dallas had been killed, something in Johnny must have snapped because he rushed at the Soc that had done it with a loud cry, wrapping his thin arms around the teenager's neck and squeezing. The Soc knew only one thing would get the kid off, and he jumped back, landing on Johnny and actually crushing him. Nobody was sure exactly what Johnny had died of, but it had been something internal, that was for sure.

Soda had been fighting to get a Soc off Ponyboy, only to get a knife in the chest. With all the fighting going on, nobody could get to him. He had died with a look of determination still on his face, usually merry eyes filled with shock as they looked blindly up at the sky.

Darry... ol' Superman had been shot to death, the Soc that got him pulled out a heater and filled his stomach full of lead. He didn't stop until he knew that Darrel Curtis would never roof another house as long as he lived, and then left him there to die.

Even the youngest of the gang, Ponyboy, had been killed when he struck his head on a rock. The Soc that had pushed him looked about the same age, and he looked at Pony with confusion for several minutes, as if expecting him to get up and fight back. When Ponyboy didn't move, he gave a small yelp and dashed away.

Why hadn't he died fighting, like the rest of his friends? Hell, even Curly had gone down in the fight, a bullet right in the head. Tim had disappeared shortly after, and there had been no news of him since. Whenever he saw one of the Greasers that hadn't gone, they told him how lucky he was. How was he lucky? Lucky that all of his friends had died while he had remained alive? What kind of twisted logic had they used to conclude that he was _lucky_?

_Phantom faces at the window.  
Phantom shadows on the floor.  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Where my friends will meet no more._

Memories continued to fill his brain, and Two-Bit could no longer shut out the familiar laughter of his friends, their voices and jokes. The shadow cast by the jukebox became the outline of a Greaser in one of the booths, at the bar, and the way it moved made it appear to be talking.

He could hear the shouting that came with the dance competitions Soda so happily participated in with Sandy, and for a moment he swore he saw the young man twirl a girl with blonde hair and soft blue eyes; then it disappeared before his eyes.

There was the _chink_ of glasses, reminding him of Dallas' seventeenth birthday, when Steve had declared a toast and ran around the restaurant, toasting with anyone who had a glass. By the time he got back to the table, most of the coke had spilled on either his clothes or someone else's.

_Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me  
What your sacrifice was for  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Where my friends will sing no more._

He stood up quickly, unsure if The Dingo was the best place to have an emotional breakdown. The waitress exited the kitchen with his coke, only to see him disappear out the door and pause in front of the diner, his shoulders shaking.

Two-Bit wasn't sure if there was anywhere he could go without being reminded of his deceased friends. Everything, no matter what it was, would remind him of someone. Was there anywhere in the entire state of Oklahoma that he could go?

_Probably not_, he thought, turning around for one last look at The Dingo before he left.

For a moment, the light caught the glass and he swore that he saw a group of teenagers sitting in the corner booth, laughing and talking animatedly. The tow-headed one smirked as he casually flipped off the one with the crazy grin on his face. The two closest to the window were in deep discussion, their heads close together.

He could not stop a sob from escaping, as he watched the image fade, leaving the booth empty, and the diner dark.

* * *

_ So, what did you think?  
I didn't find it very tear-jerking, but hey, I wrote it._

_Kind of odd, in my opinion, that the first Two-Bit fic I wrote was angstybut I was thinking of writing a companion to this songfic with another song from Les Mis,  
having to do with the rally before the whole rumble dealie._

_Again, tell me what you think, I'd love to hear your opinion.  
Just as long as you tell me it in a way that does not sound like this:  
oh my gawddd, you totally suckededed! My grandma can write better than you..._

_And so on._


End file.
